ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to provide a comprehensive and lifestyle approach to cognitive health and aging. Healthy Aging: A Lifestyle Approach to Cognitive Health will frame the spectrum of cognitive health and disease, discuss the disproportionate risks and prevalence for women and historically marginalized groups, the rising prevalence of dementia, the morbidity and mortality rates and subsequent global implications, the non-modifiable and modifiable risk factors for the development of dementia, and the protective factors to both prevent and slow progression of dementia referred to in this review as the seven pillars of cognitive health.
This review is written for all clinicians and multidisciplinary providers within lifestyle medicine. Conditions discussed in this chapter are Alzheimer's dementia, vascular dementia, and mild cognitive impairment. Lifestyle approaches discussed are movement, mind body practices, nutrition, social connection, cognitive stimulation, optimizing sensory perceptual processing, sleep, and avoiding harmful exposures to promote healthy aging and prevent dementia.
